Feeling Like a Citizen-Bryce Hedstrom

I love the way that Bryce creates community in his classroom.  I've blogged about him several times over the years (and hopefully I will come back and hyperlink to those blog entries), but I still

get something new every time I see him.

This session was about Persona Especial and how he implements it.  I used Persona Especial last year, after many years of using Ben Slavic's Circling with Balls...  All of these ideas are very similar in that our first weeks (or months for me!) of school, our curriculum is created by getting to know our students.  When I first started, I took their activities and created a bizarre story for each student in my class, like Bob swims in the toilet!!  But a couple of years ago, I did away with the crazy stories (unless the student initiated it) and did more realistic stories based on the student's actual answers.  So last year, I put off talking about activities until I had gotten to know other things.  We started with names, ages, and then things they have: job, license, car, dog, etc.  Then we went to family members by talking about where they live and who they live with.

Okay, so here are the things that I learned this summer that I plan to change about how I've been doing things...

First, Bryce said that brain research shows that the social side of the brain learns vocabulary better than the cognitive side of the brain.  So, by making connections to PEOPLE, EMOTIONS, and STORIES, we are helping our students learn better than if we gave them vocabulary lists...things that we all know, but it's super cool to learn that science supports it.

Also with brain research, Bryce changes where he is in the room for the different points of view.  When he is speaking to a student, he is close to that student (not too close!) and angled towards him/her.  When he changes to report what he found out to the rest of the class, he moves to the center of the room.  This helps differentiate the two POV in the brains of our students.  Brilliant!  I plan on trying to do this, for sure.

Bryce starts out the year with name, age, and grade.  He will ask about 5 students in the class those three questions, circle the crap out of them, and then give a quiz where students have to write 10 sentences about those 5 students in Spanish (1st or 2nd day of school!!)  The thing that I stunk at was, trying to get reps in, I would bounce between like 3 students (as a parallel character) while doing this.  After watching Bryce again, I think I will stick with the one student until they are "finished" and then move on to my second student.  Parallel characters are great, but the purpose of this activity is not just getting reps.  It's about gaining the trust of the students and teaching them that they are worth my time and attention.  Also, have the students spell their names so that we can start hearing the alphabet.

After that first day or when he feels the kids have those structures, he moves on to the other questions on his questionnaire.  The language and the questions build so that each student answers all the questions the other students have already answered, plus the new question.  Then, when all students have shared, he will go back and get the missing information from the first students (who may have only answered their name and age).  For this reason, he will pick the most vulnerable, shy looking kids for the first day because the spotlight will actually be on them for less time.  He also never talks to a student if they say they don't want to share...respecting their boundaries until they are ready.

Good stuff!  I highly recommend seeing Bryce and trying some of these things out!